Jordan Eberle

For years, the Edmonton Oilers were in the cellar of the standings, raking in high draft picks like fall leaves. Last offseason, the Oilers rebuilt their rebuild, trading away number one selections Taylor Hall and Nail Yakupov while signing Milan Lucic to a seven-year contract. Connor McDavid, a generational talent with just 45 games of NHL experience, was given the C.

With the new captain, the youngest in NHL history, and a half billion dollar new arena, the Oilers have now won five of their first six games in the 2016-17 season, holding the top spot in the Western Conference and placing second in the NHL.

“It’ll interesting to see how they do this year because I think they have all the talent to be a much better team than they have been recently, with McDavid leading the way especially,” Washington Capitals defenseman Matt Niskanen said Tuesday at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. “It’ll be for sure a different Oilers team than it’s been the last couple years.”

“We don’t have a flood, we have a disaster,” Emile Blokland, mayor of High River, told a scrum of reporters standing in the middle of a half-flooded street. His town of a little over 10,000 was left a hellish, muddy mess by the receding waters. So too was much of the Canadian province of Alberta. Four people were left dead.

About six months worth of rain fell in less than 36 hours in some parts– on land already saturated with water. It turned the relatively dry region into a soaked sponge within a couple days. The rivers that flow through the province were soon overwhelmed with flood waters coming down from the mountains, and they soon began flowing at five to ten times their normal rate.

In Calgary, 75,000 were forced to evacuate as the water swallowed streets. The city’s downtown is sandwiched between the Elbow and Bow Rivers. Office buildings, infrastructure, the local zoo, and the home of the Calgary Flames were left soaked as hippos escaped from their enclosures and the Saddledome was filled like a bathtub up to the 10th row.